Free of Hep C After 40 Years ‘Under a Raincloud’

Elaine Resnick recently turned 70. She calls it her “rebirthday” because it was the first birthday in nearly 40 years where she could look forward to a future without the risk of becoming ill from hepatitis C.

“The way I describe it is like walking around with a raincloud over your head that you’re not paying that much attention to. But you know it could rain,” she says. “It was always there somewhere.”

Resnick, a psychotherapist who lives and works in New York City, was infected with hepatitis C in 1977 during surgery. “I lost a lot of blood, and they had to give me five pints,” she says.

Hepatitis C was unknown in 1977. The virus was discovered in 1989, and blood banks began screening for it the following year. But it wasn’t until 1992 that there was accurate, widespread screening throughout the blood supply.

It’s estimated that between 8 percent and 10 percent of transfusions in the 1970s and 1980s led to an infection with hepatitis C. Today, the risk of getting hepatitis C from a blood transfusion is less than 1 percent.

Hepatitis C is slow-acting, so Resnick says she usually felt fine. But blood tests began to show abnormal liver function soon after she was infected. In 1990, once the virus was known, she was given the diagnosis of hepatitis C.

The drugs available at the time did not work for her, and her liver continued to deteriorate. Eventually she was put on the waiting list for a liver transplant. Four years ago, she got the call that there was a donor.

“I was in the hospital all night. All my kids were there,” she says. “But it turns out the [donor] had fatty liver disease, so they rejected the liver, which was a blessing for me.”

It was a blessing because at the end of 2013 new drugs were developed that attack the virus directly. They work faster, with fewer side effects, and with much higher cure-rates. The new drugs are expensive, but they are usually covered by insurance, including Medicare.

“When these new medications came out, I took them,” Resnick says. She was treated by Douglas Dieterich, MD, at the liver clinic at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. This time the treatment worked.

“Dr. Dieterich came in with a big smile on his face and said, ‘You’re cured,’” she says. “And so far so good.”